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Prompts (Billingsley & Romer, 1983; Snell, 1983a) are supplementary stimuli used to increase the likelihood that a student will emit a correct response in the presence of the SD (instruction), which will eventually control the behavior. Prompts are given before or during the performance of a behavior; they help behavior occur so that the teacher can provide reinforcement.
Some examples of prompts:
verbal prompts/verbal directions
modeling (modeling the behavior for the student so that it can be imitated)
physical guidance (student bodily assisted through an action)
movement cues (gesturing, looking at, touching the correct response)
positional cues (positioning the correct choice closer to the student)
redundancy cues (when one or more stimulus/response dimensions are paired with the correct choice (i.e. changing the color, size, or shape of the target item).